Day 6: Asheville, NC to Nashville, TN (377 miles)
Wednesday, 19 October 2005
Last updated 24 Oct 2005

1. Bridal Veil Falls	2. Bridal Veil Falls	3. Dry Falls	4. Dry Falls	5. The Bluebird Cafe

After leaving Asheville, I returned to the Blue Ridge Parkway briefly and continued down small scenic highways to Transylvania County, NC. Not the land of Dracula, but the land of waterfalls. Two particularly well-known ones are [1,2] Bridal Veil Falls, where one can drive one's car behind the falls, and [3,4] the not-so-dry Dry Falls. Ate some boiled peanuts along the way too; for the uninitiated, these are boiled in the shell and served hot (and sopping wet).

Then straight to Nashville, where I had made reservations for the 9 o'clock show at the [5] Bluebird Cafe. All hotels in Nashville were booked for the Country Music Awards, or some such, but with a technology triumvirate of cell phone (to seek remote Internet help), Internet (remotedly navigated by David, Virginie and Sabeeha to find me an available hotel), and GPS (to get there), I got to my hotel and then to Bluebird Cafe in time for the show (it helped that I gained an hour crossing into the Central Time Zone!). They had already started at 8:55 pm, ahead of schedule.

The Bluebird Cafe exceeded all expectations. I had read about it as a performance venue for up-and-coming country music artists, but was not prepared for just how intimate the setting was, how high-quality the acts were, how serious the audience was, and in general just how entertaining the whole thing was. Basically, there are four singer (with their guitars, of course), sitting in a circle facing each other, and the audience is all around them on the same floor (close enough to touch them). The singers take turns in a round-robin fashion performing a number. It may be a new piece they're trying out, or a cover of a well-known piece, or one of their popular pieces, but it's definitely country. They are all supportive of each other, and their chatter and banter between pieces is half the entertainment. The audience does not talk during the songs. A minor quibble was that the amplification was too high. Not loud enough to be deafening, but certainly too loud for the intimate setting; it was disconcerting watching a performer not 6 feet away from you, and hearing the music only from the speakers from another part of the room, as it drowned out the actual voices and guitars. But definitely highly recommended!

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